Robert Motherwell Biography, Artworks
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MOTHERWELL, Robert (1915-1991) American abstract expressionist painter.
Born at Aberdeen, Washington, and grew up at Salt Lake City, 1919-1924, Beverly Hills, 1924-1928, and San Francisco, 1928-1938. In his teens he studied painting at the Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, and the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco. He graduated from Stanford University in 1936 and studied philosophy at Harvard Graduate School in 1937-1938. After visiting Paris ( 1938-1939) and studying at the University of Grenoble, France (summer 1938), he taught at the University of Oregon, 1939-1940, and then went to New York in 1940 to study under Meyer Schapiro in the Department of Fine Arts and Archaeology at Columbia University. In 1941 he studied engraving under Kurt Seligmann. Visited Mexico, 1941, 1943. He first exhibited in the International Surrealist Exhibition, organized by the Coordinating Council of the French Relief Societies, Whitelaw Reid Mansion, New York, 1942. His first one-man exhibition was held at Art of This Century, New York, 1944; it was followed by exhibitions at Kootz Gallery, New York, 1946-1953; Arts Club of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Art, Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris, 1946; and in New York, more recently, at the Sidney Janis Gallery. He has taught at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, summers 1945, 1951; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, summer 1954; and at Hunter College, New York, since 1951. In 1948 he founded "Subjects of the Artist" school, New York, with Baziotes, Rothko and Barnett Newman. He was co-editor of Possibilities, in New York with Harold Rosenberg, 1947-1948; edited The Documents of Modern Art series, 19441951, and Modern Artists in America, No. 1, New York, 1952. The Congregation B'nai Israel, Millburn, New Jersey, commissioned a mural for its Synagogue, 1951. In addition he has participated in the Pittsburgh International, 1952, 1955, 1958; São Paulo Bienal, 1955; and Documenta II, Kassel, 1959.
Bibliography:
Review of the Motherwell Exhibition at Art of This Century, in Art News, Vol. 43, November 1, 1944. -What Abstract Art Means to Me: Statements by Six American Artists, in The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, New York 1951, Vol. 18, No. 3. -- The Painter and the Audience, in Perspectives U.S.A., No. 9, September 1953. -- James Fitzsimmons, Robert Motherwell, in Design Quarterly, No. 29, Minneapolis 1954. -- J. Lanes, Reflections on Post-cubist Painting, in Arts, Vol. 33, May 1959. -- E. C. Goossen, Robert, Motherwell and the Seriousness of the subject, in Art International, Zurich, No. 1-2, 1959.
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